Interesting blog thread over at The American Conservative, which has become my unlikely first click when I open my computer and start to surf. Blogger Sean Scallon writes:

(Modern “conservatives”) tried to assert the government’s authority over education with No Child Left Behind and in a private medical case in the Schiavo affair. When the nation’s financial institutions crumbled and buckled under the weight of bad investments, the Federal Government stepped in to prop them up as any socialist government would. And of course, in order to defend the state that does all these things, the right-socialists established police powers that are common in nearly all socialist countries that limit the right to dissent and allows the government to spy on potential enemies, real or not.

Despite such socialism, these right-socialists persisted in calling themselves “conservatives” and lied to themselves while lying to the nation about how they supposedly supported “free markets” and “freedom” in general for political reasons.  However, the voters got tired of and saw right through their lies. The present economic crisis has caused the right-socialists to be replaced by the more honest left-socialists … [bold mine-R]

Interesting to see my thoughts of late confirmed by someone from a far different ideological spectrum (truth be told, I’m hardly set in my views enough to have any real ideology)… I’ve said many times that I’d rather vote for a Democratic party that says “government is good, and it’s worth paying for,” and then takes our money through taxation, than to vote for a Republican party which says “we want to limit government, rein in spending and cut taxes” but which only sometimes does the last and does the opposite of the first two.

The whole post and comments are worth reading, so I hope you’ll click here and do just that. Here are a few choice comments:

The reason conservatism failed is because it doesn’t exist. Its an economic policy dressed up in populist sounding rhetoric. All those things you call right socialism is just how they sell the economic policy to people who get hurt by it. It’s not socialism, it’s pandering.

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The right has been predicting that Government involvement in markets leads to a police state since Hayek was ranting about in 1950. It simply isn’t so. Europe features many democracies with heavy handed intervention in the market (more than I would like really) without any slide into totalitarianism. Instead of trying to scare us with bogeymen it would be much better if you simply argued that the interventions themselves were bad - not the police state the supposedly lead.

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Honest, that is, outright socialism, at least holds certain implicit responsibilities. If you are going to openly talk of expanding the Federal Government, you will be held accountable to see that “something gets done”. If the republic party under Bush had run on the platform of the largest increase in the federal government in history, there would at least be the expectation to provide something on the scale that Roosevelt, or Eisenhower did with the Interstate highway system, or in the very least, what Kennedy/Johnson provided with NASA. 

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Socialism is defined by ownership. We have a socialist highway system and socialist dams, and for good reason. Some needs can not be met by a free market because competition is impractical or impossible. In those circumstances, treating the commodities as public goods is simply the rational alternative. Only when public ownership starts to creep into competitive industries and markets does it really make sense to call the government socialist.

One thing that “conservatism” has going for it that “liberalism” doesn’t: There is vibrant, fruitful discussion going on out there as to what it is, how it should change and what it should aim for. You won’t hear it on Rush Limbaugh or read it in National Review, but it’s healthy and interesting… and one day, when it’s all sorted out, I might be able to embrace my inner conservative and actually use the label, instead of telling people I’m a “pragmatist” and getting blank stares, as is my custom today.

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